My mother, Donna Elena, had wanted to repay him with a fortune. Enough money to elevate the Salvatore Family from a mid-tier syndicate to a genuine power. But I had stopped her. I told her I liked this man. That I wanted to be bound to him through the old blood-oath tradition.
My brothers had been completely against it. They had sat me down in the study of the Valducci Fortress, the room where all the most important decisions of the Dynasty were made, and they had told me the truth as they saw it. I was the only daughter of the most powerful Family in the underworld. I had never known hardship. I had never tasted cruelty from the people who were supposed to love me. And marrying a cold, ambitious man like Xavier Salvatore, a man who saw alliances before he saw people, would not fare well for me.
How foolish I had been. How impossibly, devastatingly foolish to believe that pure love could surpass all status, all rank, all the brutal arithmetic of power. Because today, my husband was the very person who had told me I was useless. That I was nothing. An illiterate orphan with no name.
The rain came without warning. Not a gentle drizzle but a violent downpour, the kind that hammered against the stone courtyard like fists against a door. It drenched me completely within seconds, plastering my hair to my face, soaking through my dress until the fabric clung to my skin like a second layer of grief. My phone buzzed again and again. Jane's messages. I ignored them all.
At that moment, standing alone in the rain outside the house of people who despised me, I felt profoundly, achingly stupid for ever having fallen in love with such a heartless man. And I was embarrassed. Not for them. For myself. Because what would I even say to my parents? How could I go home to the Valducci Fortress and face my mother's eyes, my father's silence, my brothers' vindicated fury?
Would they even accept me back?
The warmth came suddenly. Xavier's arms wrapped around me from behind, pulling me against his chest. He was soaked through as well, his white shirt transparent against his skin, and I could feel his heart hammering against my shoulder blade. He pulled me under the narrow awning of the garden shed, shielding us both from the worst of the downpour.